


The Unspecified

by Ninguen



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:48:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22089661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninguen/pseuds/Ninguen
Summary: In this Age of Change that the Empire has brought, collecting favours is always safer than owing them.
Relationships: Arihnda Pryce/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	The Unspecified

**Author's Note:**

> I would love to say that me finishing something with a one year delay is not a thing. I really would.
> 
> This piece was intended (and still is for as long as 2020 does not turn into anything remotely similar to that hellhole that was 2019) part of a writing challenge posed to me almost exactly a year ago involving Thrawn, Arihnda and certain non-human anatomical parts. Needless to say, that while this chapter does not include anything explicit, it sets, if very poorly, the mood for deed. Or at least I hope so. Tags for the work will change with the next chapter.
> 
> The work is un-betaed. All errors that you might find (and you most certainly will) with its English and otherwise are solely my own.

To go up in Coruscant, one must lay down first.

Or so Arihnda had been told soon after her arrival at the Imperial Capital. One of Senator Renking’s aides, a guy from Garel who had fancied himself quite clever and even more interesting, had been prone to those kinds of one-liners every time they had a staff meeting. It had not been hard to see that rather than from experience, the advice had come straight from that metropolitan self-delusion of believing oneself to be the lead character in one of those prime time HoloNet dramas.

It did not take long for Arihnda to figure out that that was exactly how most people involved in imperial politics saw themselves. The guy had been an idiot, but at least his banter had helped Arinhda to polish up her own act. After all those years of wishful plans and harsh realities, she hadn’t moved out from Lothal to play the tragic heroine. She had never liked those sorts of stories. She had moved to Coruscant to become, to achieve, and to be. A little bit of acting was necessary, but so it was everywhere else. Even on Lothal.

To begin a political career _horizontally_ had always struck her as the kind of risk than only people like Renking’s aide would take. A flashy, but unnecessary and ultimately an all too revealing move to work out in the long term. And she had moved to the capital with an abundance of long-term plans. The kind of politicians and officials that were open to that, either tricked you, or you had to trick yourself into thinking that you were doing something for them, that you got them and that they owed you. As far as she could tell, they were almost always the ones waiting to collect something that was _always_ unspecified.

She wasn’t opposed to the method; not in theory. And in all fairness, she had seen it work here and there. She would just rather be the collector of the unspecified. If that wasn’t possible, she could always settle for making sure that she had enough leverage to influence the basic terms of a temporary alliance. To be a background power fantasy for somebody else was not really the kind of thing she had been aiming for when she decided to leave her life and everybody else’s expectations back at the Outer Rim.

Information is power.

Arihnda had also been told that by a co-worker at Higher Skies, a little bit further down the road of her coruscanti life. This co-worker had been convinced for years that he was only one rumour away from making it into the scene. In Arihnda’s experience, limited at that point and yet all too revealing, it was just another empty soundbite. If anything, Imperial politics were exactly the opposite. Information was not only worthless most times, but it could quickly turn out to be life-threating if one didn’t know how and when to use it. And even when you knew that, you still had to have the means to do something with it. That was the most difficult part of the job. She might have forgotten the lesson on her first years at the capital, but Renking and Moff Ghadi had been the best of all the possible reminders.

_Turn left on the next street and walk three hundred meters._

Arihnda stopped on her tracks. The street that she had been walking through could barely be called that. It was a narrow one-way sort of an alley which wouldn’t fit a medium size speeder without knocking off all of the already fading neon signs, half-broken vending machines selling kriff knew what, and oddly attentive beings half-hidden by the colourful smoke of their pipes. If she turned left, as the pre-recorded instructions on her disposable commlink suggested, she was going to end up somewhere that could not even be called sort of an alley. She was wearing a good disguise and was not particularly worried about her own personal safety, but if – and _if_ was where politicians lived– something happened, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to make breaking news headlines as _Imperial Governor found in Red District Alleyway of an obscure Station Colony in the Outer Rim._

Trying to gain some time to assess her options, Arihnda lightened own smoking pipe. Asking around about alternative ways to get to her destination was out of the question, and she was not going to risk looking for them in a datapad either, so her search could be later tracked by the ISB or any other Imperial Intelligence Agency. She wasn’t that naïve as to think that Imperial officials were not some of the more watched individuals within the Empire, nor to think that whatever information they might collect could not find its way to the hands of a political rival. Or to the subversives that seem to have taken to targeting the sector. That left her with the leap of faith as the most efficient option. She might need to trust that the instructions he had left on the commlink had taken her own _ifs_ into account.

Yet _if_ she thought carefully about it, it was not that much of a leap of faith. Not to the extent their first off the record meeting at Coruscant had been. Yes, she had been the one that had requested the meeting. But this time he had picked the location. He was the one constantly on the move, so it was only polite to let him choose the venue that would be the most convenient for both. A calculated politeness that had sounded a better when he had suggested it. She had not expected a palace -she had certainly never picked one herself- but even for the poor standards of their encounters, she had to admit that this was a little bit underwhelming. She couldn’t imagine that he was keen on making it into the breaking news as _Newly appointed non-human Grand Admiral caught in a Red District Hostel_. If for some reason he was discovered there when he should have been somewhere else, Arihnda was certain that Yularen or COMPNOR could pull that headline out of the loop before it reached the Mid Rim. But rumours were not headlines; the damage that rumours like that could do to his career with the proper spin could be lasting, and it wasn’t as if he were lacking enemies inside and outside the Imperial military. Then, this was somebody who had to be told to smile at his own promotion ceremony.

Never regret.

Arihnda exhaled a dim cloud of red-ish smoke. That was the motto of most officials trying to climb their backstabbing and bloody way up to the top of the Empire. It was perhaps one of the few half-truths flying around Coruscant. Yet the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that regrets could also be proofs that you had tried to do something. Not doing anything was what had brought the Old Republic down. The Empire was supposed to be the opposite: the Age of Change, as they said. The Age of Regret. As long as you didn’t let them fester, regrets could even teach you how to get something done on your second trying. Her return to Lothal had perhaps taken more time and more regrets than she had anticipated, but she had come back as an Imperial Governor. She had made enemies along the way, but she had gained even better placed allies. A life that was itself a regret was what she had made sure to leave buried in the deepest tunnel of Pryce Mining when she had left her parents’ home. Reaching out to him, that initial leap of faith, had been one of her first steps towards making something out of the pile of regrets that those first years at the capital had become. Perhaps now was the time to finally get on with some of the others. Before they festered. 

Putting down her pipe, Arihnda turned left.

***

If most people that Arihnda had met at Coruscant were trying to make a living out of pretending to be clever, there was little doubt that the being that she was about to meet would have benefited from pretending to be less so. Apparently, what he fancied himself was funny.

_You have arrived at The Unknown Regions._

Her destination, the Unknown Regions Hostel, was a non-descriptive three storey building with a front only mildly cleaner than those around it. Not a great achievement, judging by local standards. Its only distinguishable feature, Arihnda noticed as she got closer, was a purple neon sign with the shape of two horned humanoids. The smoke coming up from the ventilation gave it an otherworldly appearance, helping it, in a rather twisted way, to live up to the promise of its name.

Without slowing her pace, Arihnda entered the building. The only thing that he had sent her besides a disposable commlink had been an old ticket from a podracing betting branch at Malastare. Even though it was a smart ruse, and even though covert operations were strictly speaking his area, Arihnda had never been completely at ease about the whole ordeal. It looked like self-amusement rather than proper planning. It was not until she saw that the hostel was completely automated that she felt some sense of relief.

In a surprisingly odourless hall, a male human was punching and grumbling at the screen of one of the reception machines, while the vultan that Arihnda presumed was with him looked around with the resignation of somebody who has been waiting for a while. Just in case they were tempted to ask her for help, Arihnda made a point of marching to the farthest machine and covered much of the screen with her body.

Room number 57 had already checked in.

The novelty of the situation made Arihnda’s stomach twist against her will. Every other time she had asked him to meet, she had been the one who had arranged everything and the one doing the waiting. Arihnda did not only appreciate the control that came with waiting, she sought it. Even as an Imperial Governor, she always made sure to know beforehand the briefing room, to know where the caf & refreshments would be left, where the nearest fresher was. Sometimes, those little details were the anchors of her actions. Now she was nothing short of navigating, well, unknown regions.

Login off customer service, Arihnda went towards the lift. Maybe he was angry at her after all. Maybe he wasn’t. After Batonn, she hadn’t been all that sure that he would agree to meet her again. Their dynamic had changed. It wasn’t that hard to see that he disapproved of the actions he clearly suspected she had taken before and after Creekpath. But she could _also_ see that not him, nor his aide, disapproved them enough to reject the promotions that she had made sure they have gotten afterwards. If she were still the same person that had arrived at Coruscant all those years ago, she would have been hurt by that attempt at moral grandstanding coming from somebody like him. Specially since their relationship had never been based on mutual admiration and respect. They were not friends, she didn’t need friends. They were both adults, who worked for the Empire and happen to have aligned interests. The fact that both understood that was what had made everything work so far, not any delusions about how the galaxy worked. But she wasn’t that person anymore. She wasn’t hold back by anybody else’s opinions apart from those with power over her. And whatever his moral convictions were, they were clearly malleable enough for him to work around them when he thought it benefited him. He had done it with the promotion, and he was doing it waiting at room 57. Fucking was just another way of saying aligned interests. He might be a terrible politician, but he was a brilliant strategist.

She hoped that they could get on with the thing without much talking. Arihnda had never seen the point in pretending to be somebody other than herself in situations like theirs. They weren’t two estranged lovers meeting for the first time in years; what was there to talk about? He was discreet and detached. That efficient quietness of his was one of the reasons she had finally decided to follow through the innuendos both of them had dropped here and there over the years. Up until Batonn, Arihnda hadn’t been sure if relenting with what could only be described as a necessary and at times even reluctant allied, would be worth the hassle that came with shared intimacy. Ironically, that their alliance had survived the test of Batonn was what had made her reconsider. The fact that for as much as he clearly disapproved of her actions, he would still be willing to come to her for help was invigorating. It was logical. But perhaps more importantly, it was mutually convenient. Somehow at some point the question had become why not. Arihnda would not owe him a thing afterwards; at the very least his reputation and career would be on her hands, and not for the first time. Now, that was a comforting thought. He was the kind of allied that she will need if she wanted to really succeed at the governorship. Moreover, as one of the eleven top military officials in the Empire, he had the means to get out too if he wanted.

As she went up to the third floor, Arihnda realised that she still couldn’t bring herself to really care about his reasons for being there. Not beyond that generic curiosity about his off-work persona that seem to be common enough to everyone that had interacted with him at some point. That was if he had one, of course. Comments and gestures had slip through the cracks of that stonewall personality over time, leading her to suspect that regret might have been involved in certain choices of his as much as pragmatism was. She could not pinpoint over what or whom, and she certainly wasn’t about to ask him when things had worked just fine for her. He was there. If she was lucky, they would fuck around for an hour or two and go their merry ways until they saw each other again in a couple of weeks, when the 7th Fleet was due to arrive to Lothal to set up the whole operation. No words were needed, no fuss bound to happen.

A strong smell of lavender hit her as soon as the doors of the lift opened. Whatever product the staff of the hotel used to mask the odour of humidity, it didn’t cover it as much as it blended with it. On top of that, the combination of the bright yellow & orange flowery pattern of the carpet and the brown velvet-like fabric of the corridor walls made the whole place almost taste like neglect. Charming.

Measuring her every step, Arihnda began to walk towards room 57.

It was increasingly difficult to come across somethings or someone that had not changed one way or another over the last two and a half decades. So much so that you had to put real effort if you wanted to find them. Sometimes Arihnda had the piercing thought that the Age of Change was really about controlling and managing change. It was not a flashy punchline like those she had been offered at the Capital, but a simple enough observation that had served her well so far. For the past year she had been jumping from one issue to another to make sure that the changes, the progress, in her sector were properly implemented and deeply rooted. Here and there a crack would open in the system, and she would move a step forward to change something. A careful mix of compliance and selected boldness is what the Empire expected of its managers. Grand moves, bold moves, were the currency of Grand Admirals and Moffs. She was neither.

Smiling to herself, she knocked on the door, just under the room number. She was not a Grand anything. But as she was about to confirm, the _grand_ thing was that she did not need to be. For the time being, she would let others open some doors for her. She had learnt as much at Batonn.


End file.
